Paul Klee Quotes
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I cannot be grasped in the here and now, For my dwelling place is much among the dead, As the yet unborn, Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual, But still not close enough.
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My self . . . is a dramatic ensemble. Here a prophetic ancestor makes his appearance. Here a brutal hero shouts. Here an alcoholic bon vivant argues with a learned professor. Here a lyric muse, chronically love-struck, raises her eyes to heaven. Her papa steps forward, uttering pedantic protests. Here the indulgent uncle intercedes. Here the aunt babbles gossip. Here the maid giggles lasciviously. And I look upon it all with amazement, the sharpened pen in my left hand.
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There is no substitute for intuition.
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I must begin, not with hypothesis, but with specific instances, no matter how minute.
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See with one eye, feel with the other.
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My hand is entirely the implement of a distant sphere. It is not my head that functions but something else, something higher, something somewhere remote. I must have great friends there, dark as well as bright. They are all very kind to me.
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To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.
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He neither serves nor rules, he transmits. His position is humble and the beauty at the crown is not his own. He is merely a channel.
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Art does not reflect what is seen, rather it makes the hidden visible.
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He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.
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In earlier days, even as a child, the beauty of landscapes was quite clear to me. A background for the soul's moods. Now dangerous moments occur when Nature tries to devour me; at such times I am annihilated, but at peace. This would be fine for old people but I... I am my life's debtor, for I have given promises.
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All is well with me. The rain doesn't reach me, my room is well heated, what more can one ask for? There's no shortage of work, either.
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When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed.
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A line is a dot that went for a walk.
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Like people, a picture has a skeleton, muscles and skin.
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Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.
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Everything passes, and what remains of former times, what remains of life, is the spiritual. In everything we do, the claim of the Absolute is unchanging.
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A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.
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The way to form transcends its own destination, goes beyond the end of the way itself.
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My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.
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Nothing can be rushed. It must grow, it should grow of itself, and if the time ever comes for that work, then so much the better!
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I still come closest to success with drawing. When I use color the results are dubious, for these painfully gained experiences bear less fruit.
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The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.
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Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.